Best Ever Trip

This is a tough one to choose. We’ve gone on so many trips. Should it be a family trip, a cruise, a cross-country adventure, a romantic getaway?

Well, after having given this quite a bit of thought, I am actually going to go back to 1994 when the boys were just 10 and 8 years-old and I decided to take them on a month-long, cross-country trip to Las Vegas and back in the new conversion van I had just purchased.

The van had a VCR installed in the backseat, so while I was driving upfront, the boys could pop-in a tape and enjoy themselves. If we got tired, we could just roll-down the back seats and all three of us could lay down and take a quick nap.

We didn’t have a fixed itinerary. We just sort of played it by ear and found hotel rooms at the end of the day. Stops on the westward leg included Wisconsin Dells, Corn Palace, Badlands, Mt. Rushmore, Crazy Horse, Yellowstone, Jackson Hole, Salt Lake City, Zion, and finally the MGM Resort in Vegas where we met with Liz and enjoyed the sights and sounds of Vegas for three nights.

The return trip took us to Hoover Dam, Grand Canyon, Santa Fe, Royal Gorge, Pikes Peak, and one unexpected night sleeping in the van in the middle of Colorado when we couldn’t find a hotel room. No one seemed to mind. We all got a good night’s sleep.

We met up again with Liz in Kansas City and we all drove down to Branson MO together where we saw a few shows and went to their amusement park.

I created an album with all our memories which you can see here and is one of my prized possessions. It’s the kind of trip every dad should be able to experience with their kids at least once in their lifetime.